NALAS Conference 2025 – “Encounters, Transitions, and Resistances”
Venue: University of Bergen – Norway
Date: June 19-20, 2025

Call for Proposals
The Norwegian Association of Latin America Studies (NALAS), in collaboration with the University of Bergen, invites academics and practitioners, as well as other professionals working on cross-cutting topics related to Latin America to submit a proposal to the 3rd NALAS Conference. The conference seeks to promote the cross-disciplinary field of Latin American Studies by fostering a necessary dialogue among actors involved in understanding the region’s “Encounters, Transitions, and Resistances”.

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By focusing on “Encounters, Transitions, and Resistances in Latin America” the third NALAS conference aims to explore the region’s responses to the current planetary polycrisis and shed light on ongoing processes of ecological, social, cultural, technological and political change. Latin America’s encounters with and resistance to such crises are evident in various movements, plural ‘knowledges’ and politics, and unique initiatives from the region, such as those emerging from debates proposing post-growth, post-materialist, post-development, biocentric, post-extractivist, decolonial, and pluriversal paradigms (Quijano, 2007; Escobar, 2007, 2011, 2021). All of them re-imagining transitions to an altogether different world.

To what extent have these encounters, transitions, and resistances to systemic failures shaped the identities, cultures, arts and politics of Latin America? How have different groups resisted, challenged, or supported, the dominant discourses and structures of power that drive these processes? What are the current obstacles and opportunities for dealing with intersecting crises in Latin America today? What role can human rights activism, new forms of political engagement, arts, and popular culture at large play? How can we understand the polarizing tendencies in politics, identities and society at large? How have governments in the region responded to these current challenges in terms of policies and related to demands from civil society and voters? These are some of the questions that the conference aims to explore by bringing together scholars and practitioners from different disciplines and backgrounds.

We welcome proposals that address the conference theme, or any other relevant topic related to Latin America. Submissions from all disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences are welcome. The conference also welcomes submission of film presentations, book launches, and alternative formats that might fit thematically and logistically our program.

Although hybrid panels are possible, the conference will prioritize proposals based on in person presentations. Proposals containing only virtual presentations will not be considered.

All proposals should be sent to nalasconference2025@nalas.org

Deadline to submit proposals: November 29, 2024.

For more information and updates, please check our conference webpage: https://www.nalas.org/nalas-conference-2025.